Fernando Cutz, the director for South America of Donald Trump’s National Security Council, told journalists that no decision has yet been taken on new sanctions against Venezuela, so he was not prepared to discuss specific actions or the names of individuals or entities that might be targeted. Cutz was answering questions from the media in a telephone briefing after President Trump threatened to take “strong and swift economic action” if the Venezuelan government continues with elections for a Constituent Assembly on July 30.

The US plans to continue its multiple-decade-long destabilizing military occupation of Iraq, even after the fall of the Islamic State group.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend dashed hopes that the impending collapse of the Islamic State group might mean the end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, when he said on Tuesday that the United States is “interested” in maintaining a US military presence in Iraq after the eventual defeat of the Islamic State group.

“I would anticipate that there will be a coalition presence here after the defeat of the Islamic State group,” the general said on Tuesday. “This fight is far from over… there’s still hard work to be done.”

He said decisions over post Islamic State group plans for a U.S. presence in the country are in a “final decision-making” stage.

He claimed that US coalition forces were needed to prevent a “replay” of 2011 when U.S. forces began to withdraw from Iraq following a decade of bloody, devastating invasion and occupation. With Iraq left in a destabilized condition, the Islamic State group quickly rose up as a regional power.

(P L) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez today defended his country”s right to grant political asylum to U.S. civil rights fighters, and made it clear that those people will not be returned to the United States.

‘In tune with the national legislation and international law, and Latin America’s tradition, Cuba has granted political asylum or refuge to civil rights fighters from the United States,’ Rodriguez noted at a press conference in this capital today.

The head of Cuban diplomacy stressed that none of those refugees will be handed over to U.S. authorities.

‘Certainly, those people will not be returned to the United States, which lacks legal, political and moral foundations to demand their return,’ he stressed.

The South African Council of Churches (SACC) at its recently concluded conference resolved, among others reaffirms our solidarity with Palestinian struggle for justice and the end of Israeli occupation:

1. In the light of current widespread mobilization of Christians going on Pro Israeli trips, it is resolved that the SACC executive encourage alternative tourism trips and pilgrimages through Churches and Tour groups. Such tours and pilgrimages should give a clear picture of the military occupation of Palestine by Israel.

2. In light of many Western countries’ especially USA’s unwillingness to pressure Israel to comply with international law, it is recommended that we invite Christians in those lands to play a prophetic role in relation to their centres of power. Such prophetic role to include a clear call for structural justice in Palestine /Israel.

3. 3 To defeat the idea that to speak against Israeli injustice to be to anti Semitic.

4. Information must be made available to Christian communities in South Africa about the state of affairs in Israel/Palestine. Make better use of the EAPPI and other resources.

5. Commend BDS to Christians as a nonviolent form of pressuring Israel to change. Further to pressure RSA to stop doing business with Israel.

6. 6 Establish a study group to develop Theological Resources to address Christian support of secular Zionism. Further to clearly distinguish between Zionism as it finds usage among African Indigenous Churches in South Africa, from the secular political and cultural programme of Israeli Zionism.

7. . Encourage the WCC to consider a Programme to Combat Racism in relation to Apartheid Israel that was helpful in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa.

For some time, the idea of “political centrism” in today’s Cuba has been brewing, essentially within digital media, as part of one of the United States’ strategies to subvert the Cuban socialist model, given the resounding failures and disrepute of the so-called “Cuban counterrevolution.”[1] One of the cables revealed by Wikileaks in 2010 showed how Jonathan Farrar, at that time head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, informed the State Department on April 15, 2009, that this “opposition” was actually out of touch with the Cuban reality, had no power or influence among youth, and was more concerned with money than promoting its platform among broader sectors of society.

From its beginnings, political centrism has been a geometric concept: representing the equidistant point between all extremes.

Supposedly it would be a political position between left and right, between socialism and capitalism, a third way that would “find a balance between the best ideas” of the extremes that define it, and where moderation is posited in opposition to any form of radicalism. Lenin referred to this position as treacherous utopianism, a product of bourgeois reformism. Indeed, so-called third ways, or centrisms, have never been a revolutionary option, but rather strategies to install, save, rebuild, modernize, or restore capitalism.